Save / Load / Menu / Hub / Build

Post by Salireths. 

Our work is gradually moving towards finalizing the build - it involves a lot of technical "behind the scenes" programming-related work, while it doesn't have a lot of pretty visuals, this is the foundation of the game responsible for its core experience.

Finishing up the saving and level loading systems are our big highlights for this month! It's very important to have those in order to make the game playable again, because prior to that the game could only be run through the editor.

To further support that we've yet again reinvented the Hub level, giving it the purpose of a main menu; though player can walk around it, store characters and meet with friends joining in!

Note: to my great dissatisfaction with Patreon website - there is no way to share small less than a minute embedded video snippets other than making crappy GIFs. To workaround that, under each GIF I will also provide a link to Imgur. Watch those instead, they are of a much better quality.

Hub and level loading

Hub is accessible right after starting the game, no loading screens - its right there. Hub is also used later when travelling between worlds. It is a place to swap and outfit characters, create and load Realities, join multiplayer sessions, and even change mod lists.

This iteration we decided that it would be best to remove all the bells and whistles we wanted to put into the Hub, make it a rather minimal, neutral place that player enters the game through. It's not a home, not a city, not a space station or otherwise any other important place for character's backstory like we wanted before.

The backstory is something players should decide for themselves if they wish to roleplay, and we've thought it would be best to not force any narratives onto these characters.

https://imgur.com/KTV7arm

After player creates a new profile they are just asked to create a character. Choosing one of the starting species and customization options, as unlocking more is one of the drives to play the game.

And after that player is just free to go anywhere. Use the Gateway to open a reality instance and start the game in a place that you see fit for your playthrough.

You might be wondering - "So much work been put into the Hub level to just turn into a minimalistic place like that"? No, my friend, those ideas are not gone! They are merely shifted around and morphed, and we will likely use and expand on them in the Realities players can visit on their own behalf.
If examine it closely, you will be able to see the legacy of older ideas expressed before - a foggy mysterious background and those crystallic pillars been already used in previous iterations as well.
That means there will be no forced tutorials or story sequences either. Instead we'll investigate making an adaptable help system that will work in any place player chooses to visit first. Figuring out the game YOUR way is much more fun in my opinion!

 https://imgur.com/a/wijYv2U 

By using the Gateway in the Hub you can create many instances of the same level, change their parameters, difficulty, and later access them at any time. While levels are all hand-made and not generated, we're planning to put some randomization elements into them eventually.

When stepping through the Gateway the level is being loaded in the background, there is no loading screen, and the transition between them is very smooth.

Save and load system

The new system allows players to also have multiple characters at once who share all the knowledge and progression unlocks - there is no need to start a new playthrough if you want to experiment playing as different species.

It is even possible to jump between characters quickly during the game. This ability is undoubtedly going to be very permissive, ideal for roleplaying.

 https://imgur.com/RQD6FxQ 

While we haven't focused on making the multiplayer work with new changes just yet (going to first make things work locally), here are a few notes that outline the new profile system:

• All characters and opened Realities stay on the local save file within one profile, however the knowledge tree unlocks and progression travels with you from server to server.
  This means that you can play online with friends and retain the progress when you return to your local game as well (and vice versa).
• Items, characters and worlds do not travel between servers and local game however.
• Only the immaterial knowledge travels between servers, saving things like unlocked colors, character customization options, species, apparel, weapons (weapons are not material in our game, they are "summoned"), crafting recipes and many more.
• If sharing knowledge between servers is not wanted (such as if you want to progress with your friends and alone separately) you can simply make another profile to keep both playthroughs separate.

With those improvements on a very core level being implemented, the gameplay automatically changes with them, it becomes more of "discover a way to play it" than it was ever before.

It is all about giving players the tools to extract immersive systemic fun out of sandbox worlds, rather than confining them to the tight boundaries like many other games do.

Things left to do for the new Build.

As you know, lately I was busy working on level design - bouncing many ideas around, establishing visual style, etc. This was crucial to discover what kind of worlds our game needs for the gameplay ideas we had. It's a completely different experience to actually walk around the level than envisioning what it's going to be like in your head.

As I worked, I was planning to put gameplay content into the level later, when its ready. Content like combat encounters, resource gathering nodes, crafting places, collectables - but I realized that just "planning it for later" it is not enough, its again, trying to envision the world in your head.

I could spend an eternity placing greyboxes around and trying various level layouts, but to truly experience gameplay and see if it's fun to play or not (and adjust accordingly) - we need to actually have all systems prepared first to play-test it.

Thankfully it shouldn't take much more time to complete - integration of new inventory system on the menu on at the moment, along with crafting and enabling weapons to work once again.

We keep systems somewhat separate at first, then we integrate them into the game. For example - we've made weapons and projectiles work a while ago already, but like many other things - it has been "disconnected" and only accessible with our temporary debug scripts.

Now it is being all put together.

System for peaceful and lewd interactions is connected already - for now its just licking and laying on the ground, but it can be easily expanded.

The saving and world loading systems I already talked about a bit further up the post - while it can use more work, it should already be doing what it's supposed to as well.

I also briefly mentioned character customization - that's there already as well.

And all together with our temporary implementation of Knowledge Tree we also did recently, we can actually soon witness almost all our core game systems come together at once, finally! Exciting times indeed!